Internet Explorer continues to build back market share

Posted August 3, 2010 - 06:53
by
Mark Raby

After years and years of seeing other browsers chip away at its browser dominance, Microsoft's Internet Explorer is gaining back market share, and that trend has continued with the latest numbers reported.

Browser tracking firm Net Applications released its findings of Internet browser usage for July and found that Internet Explorer took the lead, as per usual, with 60.74% of the market share.

That was a slight, 0.42 percentage point, increase over June, while the other major browsers lost footing in July. The top five browsers were:

Firefox was at nearly 25% just a couple months ago. Chrome also lost market share, but it was less than one-tenth of a percentage point. Apple's Safari, on the flip side, has seen moderate growth thanks to people using it as the default browser on their iPad.

Microsoft used to have a 90%+ stranglehold on the browser market, and its arrogance made it easy for a new alternative like Firefox to come in and shake things up. However, newer versions of Internet Explorer have caused some users to switch back, especially because most websites are still built with IE optimization in mind.

Microsoft is currently testing out the latest version of its browser, Internet Explorer 9.